 Good evening everybody and welcome great to see all of you. Thank you so much for coming out I'm Greg Caster of the Gustavus history department as I know at least some of you know This evening's talk inaugurates a speaker series in honor of James M. McPherson Gustavus class of 1958 some of you know he and his wife Patricia own my office in effect as a nice plaque to them there Who along with Patricia he and Jim and Patricia? Generously endowed the McPherson professorship of American history Which it's my great privilege and honor to hold is the first recipient Dr. McPherson is the George Henry Davis 86 professor emeritus of United States history at Princeton University And the most influential Civil War historian of our time at least I think so David you can correct me His learning and scholarship are vast and his landmark Pulitzer Prize winning history of the war battle cry of freedom enjoys wide readership among academics Students in the general public and again, I know some of you have read it While professor McPherson could not be here with us and sends both his gratitude and regrets His sister Judy Biederman and her husband Larry are able to join us and I'd ask Judy and Larry to please stand for acknowledgement Thank you so much Gusty's class of 1970 and of course Judy some of you may know worked for a long time in the biology department Running basically running labs. So thank you both for being here An event like this requires the support of many and I'd like to extend a special thanks to Gustavus president Becky Bergman where there you are. Thank you and provost Brenda Kelly is somewhere there you are Thank you both so much not only for your support of this event, but and I really mean this I know my colleagues do as well for your continuing support of history and the humanities at Gustavus Which we cannot take for granted shouldn't take for granted these days, especially And my gratitude as well to the office of the chaplains the office of equity and inclusion Lecture series the burdensome distinguished chair of Lutheran studies Marsha Bunges right here the programs in African studies gender women and sexuality studies peace justice and conflict studies and the departments of communication studies English history political science And religion whose collective Cosponsorship have made this evening possible truly is interdisciplinary and collaborative, which makes me very happy. I also want to thank our bookstore They'll be back there for a book signing and sales later and the Gustavus Technology Service Matthew Dobosensky especially for their help and now it's my great Privilege and pleasure to introduce our speaker Dr. David Blight a Native of Flint, Michigan who earned his BA at Michigan State University and his PhD at the University of Wisconsin Madison Dr. Blight is the Sterling professor of history of African-American studies and of American studies and director of the Gilder-Lairman Center for the study of slavery resistance and abolition at Yale University And perhaps no less important. He's a self-proclaimed Detroit Tigers fan for life and what I met him at the airport He had his Detroit Tigers Welcome to Twins territory Professor Blight is also a friend of Professor McPherson and like him a distinguished historian of the Civil War era Whose own learning and scholarship is vast or are vast as well Among his many acclaimed books are race and reunion a Study of how the Civil War was remembered which won numerous awards including the prestigious Bancroft Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass prizes and of course his recent magnificent biography, and I use that word deliberately it is magnificent The biography Frederick Douglass Profit of freedom, which again, I know some of you have read some of you've read it with me in class Which one the Pulitzer for History in 2019 he's also editor of a superbly annotated annotated edition of Douglas's famous 1845 slave slave narrative autobiography, which I've had the pleasure of teaching for for a long time and enjoys wide classroom use I've taught all three of these books And like Jim McPherson Professor Blight is a lucid and compelling writer Whose work not only illuminates the past but contains a profound grappling With the complex lived histories of core themes in our national life themes like freedom Equality and their opposites He is more over and again like Jim a historian engaged with not just fellow academics, but also importantly the broader public He writes in the New York Times the Atlantic magazine. He speaks on podcasts. Hopefully Gustavus's podcast we'll see He tweets at David W. Blight one. He's appeared on C-Span YouTube and in the recent again, I know some of you have seen this the recent just fantastic HBO documentary Frederick Douglass in five speeches and maybe most exciting of all He's been working with Barack and Michelle Obama's production company on an eventual film adaptation of his biography of Douglas Some years ago both my wife Gustavus professor Kate Witton steen professor emeritus of history and I Were fortunate to participate in separate summer seminars for college teachers led by Dr. Blight one at Columbia and one at Yale in my case my case We and the other participants benefited immensely From both his scholarly knowledge and for me best of all his deep obvious commitment to teaching a Commitment no doubt informed by his years as a high school teacher before becoming a college professor That same commitment was apparent in his concern about having to miss one of his classes to be here and As his Twitter profile says and I quote teacher first Even apart from his Yale responsibilities Professor Blight is an extraordinarily busy fellow much in demand and I'm so grateful He could make time in his schedule to inaugurate this speaker series. I cannot think of a better person a person more suited to that task And all of this is to say we're in for a very special thought-provoking treat this evening Following professor Blight's talk, there will be some time for questions brief Q&A After which you'll have an opportunity to purchase paperback copies of the aforementioned books I think there are a few copies of Douglas's narrative as well that professor Blight has edited now I think in its third edition which is fantastic. So I urge you to have a look I even urge you to buy some right and professor Blight will be graciously signing. I Also asked that you please silence your phones And if you must leave for other obligations as I know you might have two students, especially please do so quietly Closing the door softly behind you So now please join me and warmly welcome David Blight to Gustavus who will speak to us on the legacies of Frederick Douglass in our time thank you great and The beatermans it's great to meet you at dinner together This is a very special honor to deliver a lecture Named for supported by in honor of Jim McPherson Maybe you already all know this but Jim has long been the gold standard of Civil War historians I could name you any number of issues turns in interpretation Where most of us just wondered what did Jim think I'm serious and Then we just agreed. I've been with Jim McPherson. I've been privileged of being with Jim McPherson at many conferences Inder and Yan the most special of which was a full week we spent together in Israel at a conference hosted by one of his former students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem And what better place to hold a three-day conference on comparative civil wars It was an amazing conference we were looking at civil wars everywhere in the world even the United States But the best part of that trip was two full days in a van touring all over Israel with a group of about six or eight historians and Jim and Pat were kind of our Senior advisors. Let's put it that way and One of the most vivid memories of that is when we stopped at the Dead Sea ever been to the Dead Sea Most of us under the age of 60 something Went down to whatever constituted bathing suits and went in and did the mud bath Jim and Pat sat on little lawn chairs and watched us Which was quite appropriate. I thought But I hope to God those photographs are not anywhere on the internet Mud bath in the Dead Sea I started reading Jim McPherson when I was a high school teacher Then in graduate school And I told some of you that the story at dinner that I still remember the first time I ever called him Because he turned me down I Was I think a final year of graduate school and I was organizing a panel for the organization of American historians And I was full of Hutzpah, and I wanted McPherson to be like chair of the panel or something I have no idea what the panel was on But my mentor Dick Sewell it was constant new Jim. I call him up. He's a nice guy And somehow I as I said at dinner probably through the phone book remember phone books I Got his home number called him up Professor McPherson Would you blah blah blah blah? I'm so-and-so nobody He said give me a moment. He got off the phone for probably went and asked Pat Should I do this? No, he came back. He said no click Happily I lived long enough to get to know Jim much much better than that And it really is an honor to deliver anything in Jim's name And I'm heartened to learn that he is indeed still in good health Now Greg and I've been trying to schedule this for over two years of pandemic, and I'm glad we finally managed to do it Now this is this is gonna be about Frederick Douglass Primarily not Jim McPherson. Although I may find a way to quote Jim here somewhere But I want to start with this passage and it's not because I'm at an old Lutheran college and that I was raised Lutheran and I'm still recovering take the boy out of the Lutheran church, but There are some values you can't take out of the boy This is from Genesis 8 11. I will come back to it. You won't get it at first well, maybe you will and the dove Came into him in the evening and lo and her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off So Noah knew that the waters were abated From off the earth. It's a famous passage in Genesis about Noah's Ark Frederick Douglass employed that passage more than once in his magnificent Oratory and I will come back to that at the very end to show you when and where First of all, I want to pay tribute where tribute is due Some of you may have heard me speak on this somewhere on YouTube before I don't know But I would never have done this new biography of Douglass had it not been for a collection that I encountered now about Hmm 15 years ago could even be six. I've been saying 15 for more than years. That's probably 16 years ago in Savannah, Georgia of all places Owned by a man named Walter Evans long story short. I went to Savannah To give a talk on Douglass's narrative to a group of middle and high school teachers, which I've done many times I love doing that and my host at that point was the head of the Georgia Historical Society Who said there's a local collector here. He'd like to meet Okay He'd like to go to lunch with us. Okay a collector Well that day I met the most extraordinary man Walter met his wife to Walter and Linda Evans Walter is an African-American retired surgeon who grew up in segregated Savannah I Came north for all of his higher education Howard University a stop and at the University of Hartford and Connecticut and then to the Michigan Medical School And he practiced as a general surgeon was very successful at it in Detroit for over 30 years Which gave us a lot in common because I grew up in Flint and we're both Detroit Tigers fans, although he had seasoned tickets He could afford them But Walter's great passion in the world is collecting African-American Rare books manuscripts and Especially artworks. He has one of the finest maybe the finest private collection of African-American artists anywhere in the world a Lot of that art is in his own house big four-story Brownstone in Savannah He quit as a surgeon retired back to Savannah and has this collection in his house He invited me over to show me his Douglas collection Which that day when I met him he got out on his dining we got portions of it out on his dining room table and I'd like to tell you it was the road to Damascus and I was struck dead and I at that moment Was destined to write a bike big biography of Douglas. That's not true I took many months to decide to do this because it was so daunting, but there Was an extraordinary collection of Douglas material that no one had ever used Others had seen it, but no one had used it I don't have time to go into what it consists of Except that it the heart of it are nine very large Douglas family scrapbooks that were kept by his Two of his sons in particular his daughter Rosetta had a hand in it too over the last third of their father's life Extraordinary scrapbooks thousands of newspaper clippings most of which you could never duplicate now because all those old newspapers are not digitized They don't even exist in most archives some of them do most of them don't and a lot of family material family letters Everything from marriage certificates to photographs It was a window Into Frederick Douglass is particularly later life the last third of his life from the end of the Civil War To when he died in nineteen excuse me 1895 That we had simply never had before If Americans tended to know much about Frederick Douglass it comes from the narrative because it's widely taught We might know the younger Douglas the the heroic Douglas who escaped from slavery and made himself into a Great orator and maybe they know something about him being alive during the Civil War and meeting Lincoln or something But but by and large people have not known much about that aging Douglas the older man the older patriarch The old man eloquent as he was sometimes called Again, it took many many months to decide to do this, but I decided finally My agent actually talked me into it. You're doing it. She said No. Yes. No. Yes. Yes And so I spent many many Yale University spring breaks plus a lot of other weeks With the very tough duty of spending the Azalea period in Savannah But Most of my time was that Walter and Linda's dining room table the greatest archive I have ever had the privilege to work in They are to this day dear friends and the good news To wrap that up I just talk all night about that collection, but I won't It took years to convince Walter to do it, but he finally He's a very good businessman, by the way he waited until his book came out and then Sold the Douglas collection to the Beinecke library at Yale Which is where it is now housed and has now been completely digitized even the scrapbooks So the whole world can use it that is two blocks from my office It could have been there eight years ago but Walter's just too clever a businessman and He knows what he owns Now This book I want to say just a few words about its structure and how one Attempts to do biography and then I want to fulfill the promise of this lecture which is to talk a bit about some legacies of Douglas's life and his words and his writings for our Distracted difficult terrible times I Did what all historians do I think In particularly biographers. I boiled this very complex long 77 years life The trajectory across almost the entire 19th century down to six themes Not seven not five six There are other themes, but the big ones simply are these The first is words If you've encountered Frederick Douglass as a reader you already know what I mean He was a master of this language He did not have one day of formal education in his life. He spent 20 years as a slave 11 of them on the eastern shore of Maryland where he was everything from a field hand to a house servant to worse and Nine of those years in Baltimore in an urban setting where he learned a whole variety of skills Not least of which was his literacy Which he took to like mana from heaven No one can ever quite figure out Precisely why Douglas had such an affinity with words and language except that he encountered it early Was taught his his alphabet and literacy when he was seven and eight years old by his mistress Sophia all Learned a lot about reading from that magnificent little book called the Colombian wasn't little actually It's almost 300 pages the book called the Colombian orator Which he encountered among his his little white friends these boys in the streets of Baltimore most of the myrish He called him the street urchins Who he meets him when he's 10 and 11 and they're all carrying a book to school called the Colombian orator and little Fred Bailey Which was his first real name as real first his real? last name until he Changed it He wanted a copy the age of 11. He managed to go to a bookstore on Thames Street and Fells Point Baltimore and Basically bartered for his own copy turns out this book this Colombian orator Was the second best-selling school reader in the United States second only to the famous McGuffey reader Colombian order went through some 27 editions after it was published in 1897 and The edition Douglas managed to get was actually published in Maryland a slave state even though A lot of the book is an anti-slavery tone The book is a collection. It's a compendium of speeches Delivered in antiquity and during the European and American Enlightenment I'd say the bulk the majority are from the 18th the 18th century enlightenment Britain and the US But the first 20 pages or so is like a manual of oratory It's a how-to book. How do you do oratory? And it has everything in it from how to gesture with your shoulders and your arms how to hold the position of your body How to modulate your voice from lower and softer to higher and higher and higher on to crescendos But then it has a long section on how the true orator must reach the heart of his audience With a moral message This kid started reading this book when he's 11 and 12 so It's not that surprising That he would become such a great orator It took a lot of other steps along the way to get to be the greatest orator of the 19th century But that book that he found when he was 11 has something to do with it And when he escaped from slavery at age 20 In late August of 1838 out of Baltimore on three train rides and three steam boat rides To the Hudson River and across in a small little ferry boat in Manhattan The only possessions he had on his body With a sailor's suit that he wore as a disguise his big old broad brimmed hat a few dollars in his pocket that his Fiancé Anna had given him and his Colombian orator and one of the greatest thrills of my life may seem odd But at Cedar Hill in Washington the Douglas Homes National Parks Service now owns and manages They have a portion of Douglass's library there most of it is out in a warehouse in Maryland But they let me do a couple after-hours tours there a couple of times where I got to go in all the nooks and crannies And I got to sit at Douglas's desk. I had to wear gloves everywhere, but they let me hold Douglas's original Copy of the Colombian orator that's got we're looking at right over my shoulder everything I did but words We wouldn't be here wouldn't we would be talking about Frederick Douglass If it weren't for what he did with language with words his extraordinary ability to tell stories To write narrative, but to find metaphors For this American condition with race this American terrible condition with slavery and This this thing called America this idea this experiment Douglas became What I like to call the prose poet of American democracy in the 19th century We've been hearing so much in recent years about the problem of our democracy There's your first legacy about Douglas's life for us You want to you want to get down for a while for a few hours about what democracy is supposed to be or can be or ought to be Read some Douglas You want to understand what it means to have democracy denied and yet to still keep coming back and demanding it and demanding it and demanding it and defining it and defining it Read some Douglas Second big thing in the book is Douglas's autobiographies Obviously related to the first theme of words But this is a man who wrote 1200 pages of autobiography. He wrote three of them and then he revised the third one yet another time Seven or eight years later into in effect a fourth edition He wrote the first in 1845 the second one 1855, which is really his masterpiece the second autobiography That mostly well it's taught here and there but it's not taught as much as that first short narrative because Original narrative is short. It's only 120 pages. It's so teachable Brilliant written by a 27 year old. I always ask my students You're gonna be ready for your first autobiography when you're 27. Some of these Yale kids have so much whoots by they kind of say Sure, you will give me a break But that's second one in which he wrote when he's 37 is his masterpiece. That's over 400 pages That's a much more political autobiography. That's that's the abolitionists who's become the political abolitionists That's the abolitionist is even flirting with possible uses of violence as a tactic That's the unchained You know unleashed Douglas Who was barely able to make a living but he was an independent thinker and writer by then? And it is it belongs right there in the middle of the 1850s when it was published at the heart of the American Renaissance with Whitman and Emerson and Even Melville might adore But Melville would would say fine Melville would let Douglas in He never got asked, but I'm sure he would But Douglas left us so much in autobiography to contend with and I must say one last thing on that If you work on someone like Douglas and there've been other figures in history like this who write a lot of autobiography It's a great source But it also becomes your subject You have to keep analyzing. Why does this guy keep writing about himself so much? What's with all this vanity? What's with you know, why is it always about you? Fred I never call him Fred Frederick He used to say that to people Someone call him Fred he'd say madam that will be Frederick Yes, sir but The thing about the other it's really true of all autobiography if you write you when you write your autobiography What are you telling us? What you want to tell us What are you not telling us what you don't want us to know and if you're really famous when you do this Or you're trying to really reveal something about your life, but some other things not There's a great deal left out and in Douglas's magnificent autobiographical voice And he really is there Pinnacle of American memoir writing He tells us almost nothing about his private life About his two marriages But his four surviving adult children By what it meant when his 11 year old daughter Annie died when he was brought in England About his relationships with an English woman and Julia Griffiths and a German woman named Othelia Hassing His wife Anna of 44 years gets one mention in 1,200 pages of autobiography and she is called my wife. Oh Fred Derrick But it's 19th century for one thing people didn't do any tell all autobiographies in the 19th century and That was off-limits. You didn't want us to know and It was a difficult difficult part of his life to tell Your job as a biographer is to get to it nonetheless, however you can Side doors back doors by letters Anyway, you can Third big theme in this biography is the Bible. I say that with Apologies to understand this particular thinker and writer You have to understand how deeply steeped he was especially in the Old Testament and in the Hebrew prophets I Don't dwell on that too long because that'll take up the rest of the night I've known this ever since I first started reading Douglas, but I didn't understand it I did my dissertation on Douglas. It's my first book Which Greg showed me his copy of today that has post-its all over it. You made my day, man I actually got a twenty-one dollar royalty check on that book So there's three or four other people who still teach that book. It's the only place that can possibly be read They keep it in print because of you anyway But Douglas learned language In churches he learned language by reading the King James and The more and more and more you read Douglas you realize the cadences of the King James Bible are the cadences of his language That's why that's how he gave the first thing he remembers miss Sophia all reading to him out loud This this Douglas is a tricky writer though He claims he first remembers her reading the book of Job to him out loud. Now. Why would read it? Job to a little eight-year-old slave boy. I'm not sure. I mean, that's a hell of a story for anybody to digest But he says I remember reading the book of Job to me, you know one of the Most complete tragedies in the Bible. Why would you I don't know? I have no idea why she did but He came to love the Hebrew prophets. His favorite was was Isaiah, which is not uncommon. That's the longest book in the Bible Two or three is a is however many some of you are better experts on that than I am He also loved Jeremiah. He was a Jeremiah He loved Amos. He loved Ezekiel It's a rare speech that Douglas gives after the middle of the 1840s without some use of the Hebrew prophets And if you're at all familiar with his greatest speech of all the fourth of July speech What to the slaves before the July delivered in 1852? It has no less than Three uses of Isaiah two uses of the Psalms and at least two other Hebrew prophets. I'm actually forgetting His use of the Bible got me struggling with what to call this book and got me struggling with that very word prophet Hebrew prophets I Have no formal theological training. I Did take Lutheran Catechism, but I don't count that Well, I count it to some extent, but but I've always been Crazy fascinated with theology even though I don't know what I'm doing with it But I have Numerous friends who do and over the years my friends who are theologians helped me At various levels of my career and learning to read this and read that read him read read her read this read that interpreters of the Old Testament in particular and There were many who influenced me in writing this book to the point where I Finally gained the confidence to put that word prophet in the title prophets a big word isn't you shouldn't just throw it around And you know we use it we use it like a like a useless adjective. That's prophetic You thought the score would be four to three and you said that that's not prophecy It's like the word tragedy we use it like popcorn Words like prophet and words like tragedy should be reserved for what they're meant for Well, it's just my opinion One of the theologians I finally got to reading very carefully was Abraham Heschel the great Jewish theologian Maybe the greatest of the 20th century There's a new biography out on him by Julian Zelizer, which is a magnificent book Heschel wrote a book of some nearly 600 pages back in the 1950s called the prophets which is his study analysis meditation on Who and what the Hebrew prophets actually are and were And I came to find Douglas and Heschel and others to Walter Bruggeman Others Robert Alter Who has a whole new translation of the Bible out but Heschel really helped me because in Heschel's work there are Hundreds of definitions of what a prophet is One of my favorites was this where he said The prophet is human Yet he employs notes one octave too high for our years He experiences moments that defy our understanding. He is neither a singing saint nor a moralizing poet But an assaulter of our mind Often his words begin to burn Where conscience ends An assaulter of our mind that is what the Hebrew prophets do or did Jeremiah live to assault your mind. That's what Douglas did Over and over I would read Heschel and I'd say uh-huh that's Douglas. Oh, thank you. That's Douglas Very quickly the other three big themes are first of all fourth how a radical outsider An old a radical abolitionist always on the outside of any kind of real power Becomes over time after the civil war after emancipation into the reconstruction years Becomes a kind of political insider That's a that's quite a story We've had we've seen it happen with many other people in in history think of some of the great leaders of the civil rights movement think of a john louis my goodness and many many many others from the civil rights movement who became congressmen mayors and that Guy from chicago for god's sake became president He wasn't in the civil rights movement, but he was a community organizer Outsiders who become political insiders and what kind of prices do they pay for that? What sort of compromises might they make for that? That's part of the story of the older douglas Fifth Uh I did what all biographers. I think have to do I had to balance here and it becomes a major theme in this book trying to balance the private life with the public life That's what biography does now modern biography Now there are still biographies that are essentially like biographies of presidents that are only about the presidency And that's fine and and there's some great books of that Biographies of maybe a great artist or musicians that were it's just about the music I mean, I'm not familiar with all the scholarship on Beethoven and and Mozart I've read one biography of Beethoven Whoo, how do you write you can't write about Beethoven without some of that private life? I mean the guy went nuts Couldn't hear and yet he could still write that I mean, that's not possible. We're just humans. He wasn't I guess But I had a vow in this book That I was not going to write a chapter on the public and the chapter on the private and You know back and forth back and forth back and forth The children will be in this chapter and the wives in that chapter No, I made a vow that the public and the private would be in every chapter together Or at least I tried Because that's the way we actually live You don't get up any day and live only your public life Now it may seem that way some days because you know you're teaching loads so heavy and you know, whatever Ask Joe Biden right now if he has days that are only his public life. He'd probably say it's all I have And he gets four hours sleep problem But I was determined here not to separate these two to try to write a biography as it's lived if I could and then last May seem standard, but it's very important in this guy's life The sixth big theme is Douglas the artist the intellectual the creative mind the writer because from the moment he Takes that first stage in a Nantucket island in 1841 He's not a writer yet that took more time but he becomes A creature of his voice In fact early on The title I wanted to use for this book. I thought I was so clever Was Frederick Douglass biography of a voice And my editor Simon Schuster said nope Can't have that Okay He said too literary You'll lose some readers with that He's probably right But that is kind of what I wrote It's the biography of a voice written voice a spoken voice And that written voice can be in many different kinds He's a religious thinker a political thinker. He was a journalist. He was a great journalist. He ran his own newspaper for 16 years on a shoestring He was a prose poet. He wrote a lot of actual verse poetry, but it wasn't his best stuff He kept most of his poetry in a drawer, which is where it belongs Well, don't you write some poems now and then that the world probably shouldn't see now I promise to tell you what that quote about Noah had to do So let me float back if I may to this promise about legacies And to the Noah quote as a way of wrapping up I've learned many things in the Two and a half or more years since my book came out. I was very lucky that my book came out in early fall of 2018 I had most of two years on Speaking trail book events of all kinds book festivals of all kinds And the pandemic hit but it didn't stop as many of you know It all went into webinars and online book clubs and it's been unbelievable How much I have learned about how Americans do read books Not enough of them But a lot of them do And actually in certain kinds of publishing It went up during the pandemic people needed books And people needed help I must have been on 200 events where you get asked How can Douglas help us understand trump? Or the trump era or what we're going through or the fate of our democracy or our political condition And you know used to be able to bat away those questions as a historian right you could say uh, we don't predict Not our not our job Can't do that anymore you gotta have some answers How do we face racial reckonings? How many how many times have you heard that term racial reckoning? In the last years we're you were hearing it well before the summer of george floyd, but you really heard it into in 2020 And in the wake of that and we still do we're going through a racial reckoning again But america's had a lot of racial reckonings and a lot of them happen in douglas's lifetime And the fact is you want to understand what racial reckonings are to go through douglas's entire life was a racial reckoning Every day in every way So if you want to understand what does it mean to have to confront the past or to confront race or to confront a racial reckoning Confront a society that does not welcome you Is full of different kinds of racism some of it very hidden in systemic forms and laws and buildings And I don't know what else and some of it blunt Douglas got jim crowed more times than he could ever count legacies Literacy What is the meaning of words? Do words have power? We like to think so Can words change the world? We'd like to think so can words stop putin's war probably not But we try with them don't we? What is race? Is race a thing Is it concept Is it is it biology of some kind Is it narrative is it story is it a social construction A thousand times over and he's hardly alone here Had to define this thing called race in the 19th century And for a major portion of his life during the time the united states was pro-slavery He gave an incredible speech. It was actually a paper A formal the first time he ever spoke at an academic in an academic environment Was it In cleveland or just outside of cleveland Famous school just outside cleveland where the cleveland clinic is Oh, I can't believe i'm blocking. Anyway, he was invited there in 1854 To give a commencement address Henry Douglas never been in school in his life. What does he choose to speak on? He called it the negro ethnologically considered Very academic The speech though is a brilliant takedown of scientific racism He took on lewis agaziz and a half dozen other of the major natural scientists who were Who were all the highest places in american academia who were developing these theories of polygenesis And racial capacities And talk it's such a modern speech when you read it today. It's kind of the same stuff. We're still debating uh What did slavery mean How important was slavery in the making of the united states? You want a legacy to deal with? We're talking about it all the time now. I'm glad of that in one way I direct a center for the study of slavery and abolition at Yale. It's good for business Our fellowship applications have been going up every year The feel is hot and that's good All over the world But what is slavery? What forms did it take? What did it do to human beings emotionally? What did it do to human beings physically? Douglas always said He did not fear what slavery would do to his body as much as What it could do to his mind if you want to understand the meaning of slavery And The minds of slaveholders Read some douglas in fact one of the main themes of the narrative the first autobiography Is his analysis of the slaveholders mind It's a brilliant part of it. He's the guy's a kid. He's 27 and he's analyzing their minds legacies How about war and peace? Oh lord, that's what my first book was all about the meaning of the civil war and douglas's life and thought It isn't always pretty with douglas though because douglas wanted the civil war He wanted it to come Let the conflict come as he said in a headline of an editorial in his newspaper in 1861 He saw it as somehow the coming of an armageddon the coming of some kind of Retributive justice by god or by nature or by history on the sins of america which were rooted in slavery he became one of if not The most virulent war propagandist in america by 1862. I have an entire chapter on this in the book Douglas the war propagandist will shock you He advocated the slaughter of slaveholders unequivocally Without any compassion He was saying the same things about slaveholders that you may be seeing ukrainians say in their interviews TV about what they think of the russian troops Have you seen those interviews with the the older women who say I want to get my hands on a russian soldier I'm gonna tear their heads off legacies douglas was also Because he had to learn to be over time A pragmatist A political pragmatist He had to learn how to shoulder up to political parties They didn't always agree with especially that republican party that original republican party douglas had to learn politics out of the world of radical abolitionism You've ever been in a lot of meetings with a group of real radicals First of all they never agree with each other by definition they fight and they're often not overly sensitive And by the way douglas for lots of personal reasons even psychological reasons that I try to deal with To some degree in the book was a very hypersensitive person He didn't trust people very well And if he ever sensed a slight Whether it's a racial slight or a slight about his lack of any education Watch out legacies How often do we find ourselves now Arguing about fighting about not afraid anymore in academic settings to say what is right and what is wrong Although academics always have don't we we're good at getting around that well on on one hand But but but but however or sort of that would meant that phrase sort of always works to get inside and round and over Anything doesn't it? And douglas was not always right I point out many times in the book where he just overstepped or didn't get it But he is an example if you're looking For a human being who grows into major leadership mostly leadership by language Where he had to attain a certain humility About what he knew and did not know And sometimes we academics are not all very good at that we're supposed to be experts We're supposed to know things and then there's democracy Endlessly now we are debating this thing called democracy Is our democracy surviving How's it doing Our institutions functioning well Some maybe Some I'd argue not at all That united states senate One of the most undemocratic things in our constitution and we keep wanting it to be democratic It's designed not to be in the electoral college. What can you say? It belongs back in the 18th century where it was created and it didn't have much of a good function then Do you know what the count would be on the u.s. Supreme Court if you students ever stopped on this one? If we didn't have the electoral college And al gore became president because of the popular vote and hillary clinton became president because of the popular vote The ratio on supreme court would be about seven to two liberals Or they only play the only country in the world that has a thing like the electoral college Go when you go abroad to teach and people ask you you americans And they are they're fascinated with america. I taught in germany for a year in england for a year But they will often say this thing you call electoral college Uh Why do you have that and what do you do? What do you say? It's an 18th century creation when they had this belief in deference to Sorry, but democracy is for douglas not just about politics Democracy for douglas was the way it was for wild whitman It was about the maximization of human beings With other human beings Yes, you need law god knows we need law And we need institutions and structures You know james madison understood that if they didn't come up with the structure there in that constitution This thing this america was going to go to pieces But all over douglas's work is the struggle to figure out what could this american thing become Well, here's what it's promised And the promise is amazing douglas loved the principles of the declaration of independence He loved the declaration of independence. He loved the principles not the practices I could wander on and on but back to the know a quote just to wrap up Uh The setting was he used it several times, but When douglas had to give a major speech or had a particularly difficult Crossroads moment to explain What are the uberu prophets or even further back you go to genesis or exodus The big the big stories And you gotta remember this is a world where the big bible stories were Largely common coin today if Well, I just got up and read that quote from genesis. I'm well, you're also well steeped The old testament so but anyway the setting is this it's the election year of 1864 from taking uh Professor casters course You all know that was an amazing election. It's the only time in history a republic tries to hold a General election in the midst of an all out civil war. There's been a lot of pressure on lincoln to just call it off Just put it off until somehow when the war is over we'll have another election No, no, no, no We're supposed to be fighting this to preserve a republic here. So I think we're gonna have to show that we have a republic sorry On the other hand, he thought he was gonna lose By august of 64 the war was in a terrible horrifically bloody stalemate in virginia in georgia in mobil bay in the shenandoah valley The north is not yet winning the war. In fact, there's a genuine stalemate out of which the fear was the opposition Which was the democrats then running george mclellan for president at the former general whom lincoln had fired Running mclellan against lincoln and the democrats were running on a platform that was at least was vague But it was what it was clear on is that they were going to negotiate a peace with the south Some kind of negotiated in with the confederacy Which meant that all of this effort now at least since the emancipation proclamation in january 63 and slavery That's where off In august lincoln called douglas to the white house Douglas had met lincoln at the white house one year before but that's because douglas went to the white house and just Got in line and knocked on the door and said please talk to me That that time it was about discriminations against black soldiers. The second time lincoln invites douglas because lincoln needed him lincoln needed the most important black spokesperson of black america at mid august 64 lincoln loads douglas in the eye and asked him to be the chief agent Of organizing a scheme and he said the war department will help you He was never told how He was never told how Organized a scheme to funnel as many slaves out of the upper south as possible Before election day in case lincoln lost the election such that by the time McClellan wins the presidency and the democrats take over and they start negotiating with the south at least Whatever several thousand more slaves will somehow be legally free behind union lines Setting up god knows what a colossal legal fight that would have started And douglas was stunned Abraham lincoln is asking him to go be john brown or something And douglas sort of sucked it up and said okay He was told the war department will help you He went back to rochester new york where he lived He sent a bunch of telegrams and letters to abolitionists and agents who had been working to recruit black soldiers and so on and so forth He got a lot of people Excited to join this thing that he had no idea how they were supposed to do And then came the fall of atlanta To sherman and the fall of mobil bay to admiral ferricate which happened actually in the last week of august And the general sheridan started moving down the shenandoah valley one success after another but especially the fall of atlanta Changed northern morale Within weeks they didn't have any polling then we don't have polls on this But we do have some evidence of change In northern opinion until this point the war weariness in the north was terrible because the casualties 60 000 union casualties Dead wounded and missing in the summer of 64 alone just in virginia And the democrats were painting the republican party as the party of emancipation They were doing the same thing Our political parties do today wedge politics They were called the inward lovers and worse Douglas wanted to go out and campaign for lincoln now and they wouldn't let him Republicans were trying to dance around the emancipation issue now They're gonna be too. I mean they are the the party of emancipation, but you don't have to go out and say it all the time If you put the douglas up there on the on the stump, that's what you're saying They wouldn't let him go out and campaign for lincoln He found other places to speak especially to black audiences, but then On election night in rochester and I found this in the newspaper clipping in those scrap books Walter evans's house And you know on your scholar you find one Source for something you beg you might find a second one. So you're not You know out on a limb. I never found a second one, but I went with this baby It's a reminiscence Of a guy in rochester 15 years later. They did the same thing with douglas. They did with lincoln They all wrote their column in some papers the day. I did this and that with douglas the day I had lunch with douglas the day I went for a walk with douglas This guy claimed to be the poll worker who put douglas's ballot in the box that night Whoopee But he went on to describe how he lived near douglas out south street And they were walking in late at night to go to the telegraph office to get to hear the returns of the election And he says Out of the alley came four drunken white thugs who challenged douglas to a fight And our narrative writer Says douglas put up his fists and said come on let's have it And he claims the four drunken white thugs scurried off into the alley and went away I don't know if that happened, but I told it anyway Now Most importantly though and here comes noah The following sunday after lincoln is re-elected by 55 percent of the vote and 77 percent of the soldier's vote held at the front Douglas went to spring street ame church in rochester black church Where he had spoken countless times before he could have that pulpit any sunday afternoon. He wanted it To speak about what the election meant and at spring street Church was mobbed couldn't get all the people inside douglas went up to the pulpit and he started The speech with that passage from genesis He says, you know the story Of noah and the ark And suddenly the ark stopped on some kind of land And noah wondered And so noah sent the dove out And the dove returned olive branch in its beak and noah wondered again Is it possible is it possible? Has the flood come to an end? So he sends the dove out again And the dove does not return And so noah thought Maybe just maybe And he took the tarp off the top of the ark and low The world Had been renewed. What has douglas done? The meaning of lincoln's reelection isn't just about lincoln. It's now about the real likelihood This war is going to be prosecuted to the end with in the end to douglas meant the destruction of slavery He's gone to the oldest rebirth metaphor in western civilization No his ark, but he said something else that day. He said Next sunday I'm going back to baltimore He hadn't been back to baltimore since he escaped from there in 1838 Except he had taken the train through baltimore, but not gotten off twice He said i'm going back to baltimore to celebrate Freedom and the reason was The state of maryland had just held a referendum on november 1st To vote whether to become a free state It was a slave state And the vote was something like 12,820 to 12,510 or so. It was ridiculously close The vote was yes by 300 votes to become a free state Maryland had been horribly divided during the war So douglas says i'm going home home To his native soil of maryland now he calls it his native soil To the free state of maryland. So he did a week later and he's got paparazzi in tow, which is why we know so much about it Where does he go? He goes to the Bethel ame church and fells point on dallas street A black church one of the four churches he had worshiped at when he was a slave teenager in baltimore He comes up to the front door mob huge crowd is there. They can't all fit inside and a woman walks up to him This is hello frederick. I'm your sister aliza They hadn't seen each other since 1836 She was his older sister. She'd had eight children She named one of them frederick douglas michel But they'd never seen each other In all those years. So he took her by the arm They marched up the central aisle of the church They got up to the altar where we're told was flanked with american flags And he begins the same speech with Noah's ark Noah sends the dove out dove returns olive branch Noah sends the dove out again the dove does not return takes the tarp off Oh the world is renewed but then he quoted the rainbow part He said we have a rainbow on the sky as in genesis But then he says but that I Am in baltimore the former slave state speaking to you. I am the dove now that takes hootspa To put yourself into the Noah's ark story for god's sake, but I bet you it worked I am the dove he was a man of words and uh We're yearning for that dove today to come back and let us know that somehow the world's renewed but I have no idea when that's going to happen. So thank you I welcome some comments and questions this was critical of lincoln at the beginning Of the war because he thought lincoln should free the slaves or advocate for was Frederick justified in that criticism Um from his perspective, uh, yeah, uh by and large Uh, douglas is in 1861 and and well into 62 Speaking and writing he had a monthly newspaper And and the thing to remember here is douglas is not the political insider yet. He's very much a political outsider He's not in any republican circles yet at all he doesn't He doesn't know that preliminary emancipation proclamation is coming until it came But yeah from a radical abolitionist point of view the lincoln power the federal government's policy of returning fugitive slaves To their lawful owners in the south if that could be done Which was the formal policy of the union army and the federal government well into 1862 Was a revolting policy douglas went ballistic in august of 62 when lincoln held a Meeting at the white house with four black ministers handpicked I've never heard of them from around washington dc Come to the white house and listen to a formal Frankly fairly long statement by lincoln with some press invited in to cover it This was mid august of 62 We've had many different interpretations of what lincoln was up to here But basically what lincoln said in this speech is that black and white people really don't have a future together in america And he invites these four black ministers to help lead the colonization plans and schemes to remove as many black people as possible From the united states and go to central america And help create the coal industry now Some interpreters have said lincoln was really just Conditioning public opinion by doing this And lincoln was a clever clever dude. Let's remember that But I also think lincoln didn't know the future and at that point did still by and large believe in these schemes of colonizing by volunteer efforts Black people out of the united states if they would go douglas found that performance Beyond disgusting He said among other things it was like Encountering a horse thief and blaming the horse For the thievery like you're gonna arrest the horse On the other hand it's only a month later that lincoln issues preliminary proclamation. He already had the preliminary proclamation in a written form in a drawer back at the war department since july so Yes, in fact early or on in the fall of 61 in an editorial attacking this lame brain policy of trying to return fugitive slaves to the legitimate owners which was in attempt not to offend The border states because lincoln was so afraid the the four border states that had not seceded from the union Kentucky, mariland, delaware, missouri Lincoln was always so tense about whether those border states would secede. He had good reason for that But douglas said that policy makes abraham lincoln the most powerful slave catcher in the land Now his tune will change markedly after the preliminary proclamation And in the hundred days between between the preliminary and the final emancipation proclamation douglas was still a little dubious But before he left rochester to go to boston right after christmas For the celebrations they hoped it would take place on january 1st when the final proclamation was to be signed That's what he said anyway Douglas crafted an editorial To go into his newspaper in january After the proclamation had been signed and yet it already And the title was a day for poetry and song Now lincoln hadn't signed it. He wouldn't have published that He put that one away Uh, so it's a very testy relationship between these two, but it grows eventually into What has to be called enormous mutual respect And these eventual three meetings i named the two The third mini of course comes on the day of the second inaugural address douglas went to you probably know this Douglas went to washington Was standing right down there if you've seen the famous photographs of lincoln delivering the second inaugural Douglas was out right down there about 20 rows out standing Douglas just said i gotta be there And uh when he heard the speech and then frankly when he read it That was the greatest speech that any president had ever made Because of what it said It said this war was caused by slavery. This war will destroy slavery. It must it will And then after the speech was over douglas got in line out on pennsylvania avenue and just walked to the white house Behind the presidential carriage. He had no invitation to the reception. He just went up and got in line and Said they said sir, you don't have an invitation. He said tell the president frederick douglas is here Took five minutes or so and somebody came back and said I went in and he did and they met in the east room this big reception We have one eyewitness to this douglas tells this story in his third autobiography for all it's worth He said he could see lincoln's head up above everybody blah blah blah And they came together and Lincoln said mr. Douglas, would you think of my speech? Douglas says he demured. He said, oh no, no, mr. President attend to all of your guests Doesn't matter what I think. No, mr. Douglas. There's no one in america who's opinion I value more than yours blah blah So douglas tells us and there's one eyewitness who heard it Said mr. President that was a sacred effort By that point in time is the way I write about it Douglas and lincoln on the emancipation question. We're speaking from the same script But they weren't on the same script You suggest in the beginning of the war other comments questions Please don't be shy I see you squirming. I'm gonna call on you. Yes, sir in the orange sweatshirt Is that orange? Yeah Hey, so you use the term wedge politics to describe the usage of Terms like the party of emancipation during the abolition era. So can you define the term wedge politics for us? Sure And their terms are our terms because it's the same thing You find out what a part yeah If a party has an issue that they've made their own and you want to make the electorate Fear them because of that Then you go for broke And the democrats in the 64 election. I always tell my students that the 1864 election was the most racist in american history until the next one Because 68 was even worse in the 64 campaign the democrats created all kinds of Fake news Misinformation disinformation. They put out these lithographs these posters called miscegenation balls that showed these pictures of black and white Men and women kissing and dancing together and claiming that these balls were being held in major cities all over the north They called Lincoln abraham africanus the first claiming that he was really black They used the n word all the time And they said if you vote for republicans White men are gonna have to marry black women Black people are gonna have all the rights that you have Children will go to school with black children Right then 1864 fear Fear is the most motivating thing in politics. You can hate that if you want but you also if you're gonna go into politics You better learn how to do it That's what wedge politics are Pick your example today Let's be honest What were some republican senators doing in the hearings for judge katanji jackson? What was ted cruise doing with this children's book? i'm sorry One commentator on i don't know what network Said that He thought the handling of judge jackson by three or four of those senators was a hate crime There was no one even wedge issues. They had to invent the issues Well, sometimes that's is what a wedge issue is Take the issue of CRT what The non-existent critical race theory not being taught in american schools that is now animating So many local elections in this country and so many school boards is a classic wedge issue It worked for yonkin in virginia and his party now thinks it may work elsewhere and it might Now democrats have used wedge issues too. They're just not as good at it Did is that the way you see your wedges? Is that the way you would define a wedge issue? You find a vulnerability about your opponent. Do you remember your donor? No, you don't of course you're not old enough um Look at the history of gay rights Well, there's marriage equality LGBT rights Now it's the transgender issue But if you just look at the history of gay rights and the way it has been used in elections Until it couldn't be used anymore Although yes, it can because it's revived again Has always been a classic wedge issue Well, carl rove was running the bush campaign He got gay marriage on the ballot And certain states that might be a little leaning blue but not quite Got that on the ballot and man they went red That's finding now that's people had a perfect right to vote their beliefs But anyway wedge issues have always been around I mean that the federalists used it on jefferson Jeffersonian republicans used it on the federalists The idea of a wedge issue. It's why conspiracies have always been of some kind Have always been part of our politics You can't wish it away Oh god, yeah, well Well, the yeah the right in america loves douglas because he was a republican That's a very different republican party. He belonged to although it was it was he struggled to stay He remained a loyal republican the rest of his life and that was against The wishes of some of the next generation of black leaders We didn't even get into that douglas has all kinds of fights Very edible stuff going on between the next generation of black leaders and who wanted to knock douglas off There's a lot of that nasty stuff in the book though if you want to read about it Let's have one more here. Yes, ma'am right back there Yes Oh, you want the mic, of course So the lost cause narrative is definitely a big topic kind of or something that i've looked into a lot But i was curious in your opinion. Um, how did that kind of affect the teachings and i mean current teachings of frederick douglas and also just publications of his work Well, the lost cause is of course the Ideology the narrative the story that evolved In the wake of the civil war and particularly by the later 19th century Where the white south although they were not alone One of the great successes of the lost cause story is the way they convinced many northerners to buy into it It was the idea that the That the south had been defeated by a leviathan of industrialization Or as robarty lee called it superior numbers and resources That they had never really fought for slavery and had only fought for home and hearth And sovereignty state sovereignty states rights if you like Um, and that southern soldiers had fought for their families and their women And not for slavery because most of them weren't slaveholders So the story went it developed though. I wrote a a book Largely about this called race and reunion It developed into a racial ideology Of white supremacy By the 1880s 1890s a powerful powerful ideology And it became eventually not about loss at all, but about victory Most lost cause Speakers orators writers By the 1890s and into the early 20th century Mostly southern but not entirely Uh, we're no longer arguing about or no longer Speaking about What southern loss meant it wasn't about defeat anymore. It was about victory and the victory was over reconstruction The 10 to 12 year period after the civil war which the south took great pride in defeating and they did defeat it This attempt at a By racial democracy in the south is attempt at the democratization of southern politics to a degree So it became a victory narrative by 1900 and a victory narrative that the whole nation could own In an age of a new and virulent kind of white supremacy best evidenced in the Widespread practice of lynching Almost all unpunished lynchings Douglas hated the lost cause And in that last third of his life Gave endless in his writings it too. He wrote a lot of essays and things like the north american review and harpers and other places Um, and then in speech after speech He attacked the lost cause idea. He was attacking the lost cause ideology Right when lee died lee died robert ealy died in 1870 only five years after the war and douglas writes A piece in he had yet another newspaper. He found it called the new national era only lasted for three years but douglas writes a piece in that Paper and then he used the same phrasing out on the circuit as an orator He said he was sick and tired of the nauseating flatteries of robert ealy How is it that the man who leads the crusade to destroy the united states government is now honored in death douglas went in nothing to do with honoring robert ealy And i've been asked this 60 times. So why not and was douglas if douglas had been around which of course he's not Except in trump's mind. He might be If douglas had been around to see uh, these lee monuments come down in the last year He'd have been astonished like the rest of us But i think he would have cheered Douglas was fond of using a phrase in his memorial day speeches of which he gave dozens I would say please let's remember there was a right side and a wrong side in the late war douglas wanted nothing to do with both siderism the civil war He wanted it understood as A struggle caused by slavery A struggle ended by destroying slavery and the reinvention of the united states through the three great constitutional amendments As also the result of the destruction of slavery That we still are debating The merits of the power of the influence of this lost cause ideology Is amazing in one way and to me not amazing in other ways It simply continues to show us how important those events in the 19th century were In some ways the civil war is never quite over in this country and reconstruction is surely never over As long as we debate federalism The relationship with the states of the federal government and as long as we are debating What race means in this country and where it belongs in law or doesn't belong in law And why racism continues to revive no matter what The civil war is not quite over Should be And that thing called the confederacy Why doesn't it just go away? It's it's had a bad rung the last four or five years with monuments coming down and flags being taken down But what did it take to get the flag down in south carolina the mass murder in a black church? Why doesn't the confederacy just go it only lasted four years for god's sake Why doesn't it just go away Because it's still useful All right